ZeChocMoose

Here are all my commutes are various points: Undergrad - lived on campus; so fairly simple and straight forward First Professional Job - 10 min drive MA - 1-1.5 hrs walking/metro/bus. Way too long for me personally and shaped all subsequent commutes to make them shorter Second Professional Job - 5-10 min drive for year 1; moved and then had a 30 min drive for years 2-3 PhD - 20-25 min walk for year 1; moved and then had 15 min walk for years 2-6 Postdoc - 15 min walk I now preference shorter, walking distance commutes because it works best for me personally. It also gives me a minimum amount of daily exercise. For walking at night in poorly light areas, I would attach one of those blinking lights to your bag/jacket if cars are going to have a hard time seeing you.

In my PhD program, people finish in a fairly wide range between 4 - 9 years and department funding tends to run out after 5 years. The people who finished within 4 - 6 years tended to have the following characteristics: (1) received a fellowship for at least one of their years so they didn't need to RA/TA to get funding, (2) knew what their dissertation topic was going to be before they were done with classes and wrote most if not all of their required papers on that, (3) had a fairly strict timeline of what needed to get done each semester to keep moving forward, and (4) had no major hiccups along the way. Unfortunately, there is not much you can do about number 4 and I have seen it derail people a semester up to a couple of years.

I would suggest to have a frank conversation at least with your advisor. Assuming you have a decent relationship with the person, I would be straight forward with talking about your concerns. Have they seen your job market materials? If not, I would have at least one person - ideally two people on your committee look at them. I also would talk to alumni that graduated recently and have been on the job market in the last couple of years. These are the people that can really give you insight about what the market is like and the nature of T/TT jobs that you could get. When I was on the job market last year, I applied to academic and non-academic jobs and figured that it would sort itself out. Non-academic jobs in my field pay more and generally have a better work-life balance so those that really decide to stay in academia tend to be more dedicated about it since they sacrifice money and time. And if the TT/T job is not possible and you want to stay in academic - what is plan? Apply to postdocs? Visiting assistant professor positions? Assistant research professor positions? I suppose this could happen - but it seems really unlikely. Most of the professors who act like this/think like this are not shy about their feelings towards non-academic jobs. Don't discuss this with people who won't be at least neutral towards the idea. And I won't worry about feeling that your spot was wasted or that your university made a poor investment decision when they chose you for admissions. Those are things that are honestly not your problem and no admissions committee thinks that all the PhD students are going to stay in academia! That is not possible - there are not enough jobs! And if you are feeling guilty about it because there can be a weird emotional process when you seriously consider leaving - staying and making yourself miserable is really not the solution here. I actually don't think these reasons will reflect poorly. Being concerned that you won't be able to secure an academic job and having doubts about whether you want to do academia are fairly solid reasons to look for alternatives! Not sure what field you are in the humanities, but job prospects at least in History and English look bleak and I doubt will approve in the next couple of years. And it is possible that you may get offered an academic job or several (who knows?!) , but it won't be ideal for various personal and professional reasons. Speaking from experience, that is a hard decision especially when you are neutral about whether to stay in academia or not.

In what though? In higher ed admin? Or you going to try to admin at a center of learning and teaching within a university? Or something else?

This may depend on what you want to do after. If it is academia - would you rather be in academic in a higher ed program or instructional design program? I don't know that much about instructional design programs - but there are only about 100 or so higher ed programs in the U.S. and last year, roughly 40 tenure-track assistant professor positions open. That was considered a big year in terms of available job openings. It is hard to know this year whether it will be another good year in terms of openings. The good news about higher ed is there are many more available jobs outside of academia in either administration, educ policy, think tanks, student affairs, educ research, educ non-profits, etc. Usually those jobs have better salaries and sometimes better work-life balance. For higher ed - generally people are able to secure some type of related job in the field assuming that they attended a decent PhD program - it just might not be their preferred one.

In my discipline, it is also common for people to get training in both quantitative and qualitative methods. Usually people specialize at some point and gravitate towards one or the other. It is the rare academic that does both well - it happens, but not that frequently in my experience. What is more common is to collaborate with someone else who has the opposite expertise if you are planning a research project that is going to utilize both methods.

Education is one of the those fields where you need multiple years of full-time experience before you are going to be competitive for admission at a selective education PhD. I am not sure what subfield that you are interested in - but I would start applying to entry level jobs and be really flexible about where you are willing to live. It also might be easier to get a job in whether your part-time experience was. I know in higher ed if you don't want to do traditional student affairs work - people will look at academic advising, undergraduate admissions, registrar, college access programs like GEAR UP, etc. Admissions is generally a safe bet because there is a high turn over from year-to-year and offices should be posting soon (if they haven't already) for the next batch of admission officers for the fall.

I agree with the above posters that spending 75% of your stipend on housing is not a good idea. Is that to live in a one bedroom apartment? Are there cheaper university options where they assign you a roommate? Alternatively - have you looked into subleases? Usually those are cheaper and shorter-termed. If you can sublease for a month or two (or even the Fall semester) and then you can move into a more permanent accommodation for the Spring semester once you have a better understanding of your city/town and will know more people to find roommates/ask for housing leads.

1. This is not that unusual in higher ed PhDs. My cohort of 10 had a range of ages mid 20's to early 40's and 3- 15 years of experience working in the field. You make the case because you can talk about your research interests and about your rich experience of working in the field for eight years. Competitive higher ed PhD programs are going to expect that you have multiple years of experience. I had 5 years and I was on the lower end in my cohort. Your multiple years of experience are going to help on the back end too when you are searching for jobs post PhD. 2. Your master's GPA is fine. I won't comment on it personally unless you ended up failing a course. Grades are usually not critical factors that make or break your case unless there is concerns that you won't be able to handle the work. A 3.6 is totally reasonable. You want to spend much more time and energy figuring out who you want to work with and show how your research interests align with those people. Yes, people. You want to have at least 2 people that you would like to work with. 3. First gen can be very relevant especially if the research/mission of the department is focused on access and equity. I think you can mention it in a couple of sentences about it is one of the reasons that attracted you to the department and discuss how you are a first gen student. If your research interests are on this too - I would mention it more but that doesn't seem to be the case. A question you didn't ask is about your overall professional goals. It seems like you are debating between academic or non academic positions. I would pick a department that is going to give you experience in both if you are still not sure when you apply. Good luck!

The better question might be what are your concerns about the programs that you have gotten it to? Is it just that they are outside of DC? I assume you selected these 4 programs because there was something about them that you thought would be a good fit for your career and research interests. Noone is going to be able to tell you what the best program for you is - you will need to do some additional research and talk to current students and faculty. I would pick the one that has the most curriculum overlap, has at least a couple faculty that you would like to work with and ultimately put on your dissertation committee, gives you funding, and allows you to gain research or admin experience with international students while you are in the program. It is going to be really difficult to get a job working in an international office without relevant experience. It is not clear what your professional experience is or how long you have been working in the field. My research interests/experiences aren't related to international students - but I have good friends who have worked/are working in those areas. Mostly, they don't do their PhD/EdD full-time though. If you are really just interested in admin, I would keep my full-time job and pursue my doctoral part-time. Research PhDs in education are not particularly that helpful in getting admin jobs. Or you can take a full-time job once you finished your coursework and qualifying exam and then you just do the dissertation from afar. That is what a lot of PhD students in my program do who are not going the academic route.

At the doctoral level - it is about about who you would work with and what your research interests are which you haven't told us so it is hard to advise... Also do you want to go faculty or admin when you finish? That also may change where you select as well. The funding situation would be helpful to know at each school because sometimes that can change a lot.

I sent you a PM about a specific program that you can look into. Other ways to fund yourself for a master's program w/o taking out loans. It is fairly common in education to work full-time and attend school part-time. As education is very work experience focused this will have the added bonus of increasing your experience and may lead to better job offers once the master's is finished. I know some people decide to work for the university they want to go to school for and this gives them tuition remission. (Check though that your work allows for you to take classes if you go this route. I know in some offices this is not possible given the work load or travel requirements.) In my PM, I also mentioned getting an assistantship which usually provides tuition remission, healthcare, and a stipend in exchange for working 20 hrs per week. Some universities are better than others in term of offering assistantships to their graduate students. I would look at big public universities - usually they offer assistantships to run student services, residential life, and other offices because it is cheaper than hiring full-time staff. This is also the most common way how higher ed students get fully funded. Lastly - you could work full-time for a couple years and building up a savings so you don't have to take out any loans. I don't usually recommend self funding for a graduate program but sometimes for master's program this may be the only avenue available to you. Do not do this for a PhD! The program should be picking up the costs and providing you an assistantship to get the experience you need to secure a job after you graduate.

If I was you - I would probably apply to a mix of master's and PhD programs and see where the chips fall. My guess is for the super competitive programs like Harvard, Stanford, etc. where there is only 10% acceptance rate (or lower), it is going to be difficult because you'll be competing in a very strong application pool for a limited amount of spots with the majority of stronger candidates having master's degrees + several years of experience beyond the master's. You'll really need to stand out somehow which is hard to do. The main stumbling block I see is convincing the committee that you are committed to scholarship in international education especially if you have no research in the area and your professional experience in the area is limited (3 years or less). (From your description, are you on the first year of teaching English in Japan?) You'll need to write a very convincing SOP about your research interests and how they align with several of the faculty - and to be honest that might not be enough. Programs at the doctoral level tend to be risk adverse and don't take as many chances on people in other levels (undergrad, master's) especially if they are unsure you will succeed in the program. Therefore, I also would apply to some less competitive doctoral programs where you can still research your topic areas in international education.

It doesn't really matter if the school isn't prestigious on the undergraduate level. It matters if your particular graduate program is considered good. I also say as someone on the academic job market right now - the topic of your dissertation and how well known your advisor is and other faculty that you have worked with is extremely important. You want them to be well connected so they can call up their colleagues in other schools and advocate for you/get the inside scoop/find out about non-posted opportunities when you are on the job market. Academia is super competitive at this level so I would lean towards your first option if you are considering an academic career unless the graduate program there is known to be not well regarded.

Since you are changing topics, this makes it fairly easy/justifiable/understandable to explain the change in committee members and let the 19th century person go. Don't keep a toxic person on your committee. Just don't. There is no benefit to doing this especially given the behavior of this person to you in the past. You'll feel a lot better once you make the clean break and you can move forward with a group of people who at the least are neutral towards you and at the best will be supportive. I would also be concerned that the DGS is not going to be that supportive/helpful if you have problems with the 19th century person in the future given that hu is married to this person. That seems like a fairly large conflict of interest that most people will find it difficult to navigate even if they try to not let that affect their judgement of the situation. I also have watched readers on people's comprehensive exams try to actively fail the person so the potential for horrible outcomes seems too high IMO to keep this person on your committee.

Sorry to hear that it worked out the way that it worked out, jarwiz. Schools like Phoenix are tricky given their rotating faculty and how doctoral students are so dependent on their chairs/committee to finish. If you feel up to it, you can make a complaint with their accreditator - Higher Learning Comission. Information on how to do it is here: https://www.hlcommission.org/HLC-Institutions/complaints.html

It really, really depends on the department. In my current department, you might be lucky and get 1-3 classes to "transfer," but you need to have taken the course within 5 years and then you have to submit a packet of materials that includes the syllabus, an official transcript, and the final assignment for the course. Usually, a paper - but sometimes an exam. Then you need to get the professor that teaches the equivalent course to read and review the materials and sign the form that says that the course that you took elsewhere is "equivalent." (The professor might request additional information to make an assessment - i.e. powerpoint slides, other assignments, etc.) Then the department chair needs to review everything and sign - then it goes to the dean to review the materials and sign. So it is a lot of work and this is only for one course! Anywhere in this chain - you might get told no. I got two courses to transfer this way and my master's was in the same discipline. I could not get the third class to transfer because the professor who teaches the "equivalent" course said no. The max I heard someone got was four courses to transfer from their master's, but it seemed really difficult because the school considers 4 to be a lot and I haven't heard anyone else achieve this feat.

It is not clear to me - how many semesters are you in at this point? I can't tell if you already have a year under your belt or you actually haven't started yet. I would take a leave of absence as rising_star suggests (if you are actually a returning student) or just withdraw if this is your first semester. You want to make sure that you withdraw soon so you can get the majority or hopefully all of your tuition back. After you officially withdraw from the school (there should be instructions on how to do this on your school's website), you can write your PI an email explaining that upon further reflection that you would like to attend (or stay in the program - if that's the case), but you can't make the finances work at this point. You realize that the timing isn't ideal being so close to the start of the semester (or perhaps the semester is already started for you) and that you appreciate all s/he has done for you You can also throw in something about that you hope to work with him/her in the future (if it's true). If your PI is at all reasonable - not being able to afford the program it is a pretty straight forward reason why you can't attend and why people drop out. S/He might be disappointed, but should understand especially since s/he can't fund you.

Before you resign - do you have another lab lined up? I know things have been really rough for you - but resigning without having another lab secured seems really risky. Couldn't you circle back to your professor again and tell him/her that the slides aren't usable?

I agree and I also think it needs to come full circle. Once researchers know what is the effective component or at least strongly suspect it's x, y, and z in this particular school or schools - they need to try to replicate it in other classrooms and schools. The field is starting to do more of this which I find promising - but a lot people tend to want to stop once they find something that worked in one school and label it "best practices" which is so unfortunate because some of these practices don't translate well to other places or other educational contexts -or- school doesn't have adequate resources to successfully implement the practice. Having worked with a lot of economists, I do think they don't get or maybe believe that education context matters. I am not sure if it about insufficient background in education or the models that they tend to estimate just ignores this - but yea some of the assumptions that they make in their models are a bit puzzling. To me, this comes back to how educators are trained not whether they have a background in teaching. Schools of education don't do a particular great job in making sure students in all education programs understand research, assessment, and evaluation. They tend to make sure only students who are already interested in these topics learn about these issues. Unfortunately, in some schools of education, they don't have adequate faculty to teach these topics either. I know in higher ed programs there are only a handful of schools that even offer classes on these topics.

I agree with you. I think it's one of those it sorta depends what you end up doing in the field of education because education is not just solely about K-12 students or their schools. There are some subfields that it's more important to have leadership/administrative experience or to understand the nitty gritty of how education policies are made or to be able to apply research methods to evaluate education programs. I would advocate more for having some background in your education subfield before you go back to school - that could be teaching, but it doesn't have to be. I don't think it's fair or realistic to assume that policymakers are going to have teaching - or really any education employment experience. There are a lot of type of policies that they need to deal with and they are not going to have background knowledge on the majority of them. I think it's way more important that they reach out and listen to educators than for them to personally have the experience. K-12 education has serious problems not because people don't have teaching experience - it's because there is widespread inequality in our society and we see that play out in the quality of schools that are available to students. Students who are poor and students of color often attend schools in low quality schools year after year that have compounding effects on the quality of education that they receive and how they feel about education. To be fair a lot of people don't understand this - policymakers, the public, some teachers, some academics, etc. State assessment tests are easy data to collect from all public school students so it tends to get used a lot in all sorts of ways - some legitimate and some not.

That is great news that your current place is so supportive of independent research. It seems fairly uncommon in my experience unless it is explicitly negotiated in the job offer stage. Will they allow you to publish the research in journals? I know that has been a sticking point for some of my colleagues - usually the ones who work for the federal govt.

I am not in your subfield for education so I can't really comment on which is better curriculum or assessment for long term career prospects - but I can say that trying to attend a PhD part-time while hoping to secure a tenure track job post graduation is fairly difficult. Mostly because part-time students don't get enough research mentorship and corresponding publications during the PhD to make them that competitive when they come out since they are working their job instead of being research assistants for their professors. All the people that I know who have successfully attended education PhDs part-time stay in non-academic jobs - administration, education government or non-profits, policy research centers, etc. It is also important to choose a program that is welcoming and accommodating to part-time students. My master's program had a good portion of part-time graduate students, but some required classes were offered during the day which were really difficult for some of the part-time students to work out especially if they had bosses or offices that couldn't accommodate them being away for 3 hrs a day.

I am sorta torn on this one. Usually higher ed/student affairs programs look for 2 academic references and 1 professional reference. The fact that you were a volunteer and the position wasn't related to education leans me toward no. I am not sure what he would add that you wouldn't already get from reading your personal statement and resume. I would only ask him if you didn't have a better professional reference. As for program - I am not sure it really matters which one you complete. You do want a program that will provide you opportunities to work in a relevant unit on campus while you go to school as work experience is super important in securing jobs post graduation.

Survey research is an extremely marketable skill especially in the social sciences. I see a lot of industry jobs that are looking for that skill set so I would learn all I could from this assistantship especially given that the academic job market is brutal and TT jobs are not guaranteed. As someone who is hopefully graduating this year (crossing my fingers!), it's really really important to work on other skills in grad school that will make you employable when you are done. In my department, there is a matching process for first years to assistantships. I know some people get less than ideal placements for them and usually the advice is to do the assistantship that they are assigned to for the year and during that year work on making connections to other professors so it is possible to switch in their second year to something more aligned with their research interests and/or what they want to learn. You may also discover that you like your placement. Since you haven't started yet, I would keep an open mind about it.